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Saturday, June 29, 2013

Harry Potter in Hindsight: Dumbledore the Flawed Mentor

This post is for Matt Anderson, who wanted me to explore the
relationship between Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore.

On the surface, Dumbledore appears as the typical wise mentor and
Harry as the typical hero orphan with a huge destiny. We've seen this dynamic
in other works:The Hobbit,Lord of the Rings,Star Wars, and evenThe Odyssey. Yet in these cases
the mentor works in the shadows and only exists to guide the hero.

Dumbledore does not have such a role. He takes a more active role
in shaping Harry's life. I will argue that Dumbledore's tragic history
influences his present decisions and ultimately defined his relationship with
Harry in life.

Dumbledore's Fatal Flaw

All heroes have flaws. Less often, mentors often wield them,
because we see mentors as shining knights who can do no wrong. The flawed
mentor proves more interesting because he or she has a personal journey in
addition to the hero's, and the flaws often shape the hero's journey as well.
Dumbledore had already taken his journey, and his wisdom helps Harry succeed in
defeating Voldemort.

Dumbledore's flaw is blinding love. Not the selfless, affectionate
love that Harry shares for his friends and adopted family, but a deceiving
obsession that allowed others to influence Dumbledore. That capacity allowed
him to settle down and take care of his sister Arianna after graduating from
Hogwarts, but it also blinded him to Gellert Grindewald's ambitions to taking
over Europe and enslaving Muggles. Arianna ended up paying the mortal price,
while Dumbledore had to imprison his supernatural boyfriend, and Abeforth never
trusted his older brother again.

Voldemort serves as Dumbledore's antithesis regarding the fatal
flaw of love. Voldemort, conceived thanks to a love potion, cannot understand
caring for another person despite having loyal followers. That lack of empathy
also allows him to commit great evil acts, from killing his father's family to
starting a reign of terror in Britain. Unlike our headmaster, whose love for Arianna
and Abeforth pulled him back from the abyss, Voldemort has no restraining bolt.
The Death Eaters that love him -- Bellatrix Lestrange-- tend to linger on the
psychotic side. Thus when Voldemort takes the plunge in Book Seven, no one can
save him, not even Harry at his most merciful.

Raising a Hero

When you read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone initially, you
think that the Dursleys are horrible people, and you are correct. Most readers
are correct in that assumption. The Dursleys spoil their son Dudley rotten,
don't speak to their Potter relatives who are in hiding from the most evil
wizard of all times, and treat Harry like dirt. They make an effort to keep him
miserable and don't appreciate that he saved Dudley's life in Book Five.

"Why does Harry have to stay with such horrible people?"
we asked; J.K. Rowling explained why a year before Dumbledore did in Book Five,
but we also assumed that she was following a tradition that fictional orphans
had to have detestable relatives.

It wasn't until I reread the first book with my younger brother
that I understood the Dursleys' perspective. My younger brother hates it when
his daily routine is different, and I explained that the Dursleys were the
same. For them, magic would disrupt their routine. As someone who likes
routine, I suddenly realized what had happened in the first few chapters, and
how manipulative Dumbledore was.

Dumbledore had forced his hand on a normal Muggle family to
protect a child wizard for destiny's purposes. He used guilt and love to
convince Aunt Petunia into taking in her orphaned nephew, first by informing
her that her sister was dead-- and if you read the extra material on Pottermore
you realize that Petunia hadn't spoken to her sister in years-- and that if she
didn't take in her weird nephew that she'd be sentencing him to death in the
event that Voldemort returned. She didn't have to take in Harry but she did,
knowing the risks and her guilty conscience. And when Vernon tried to go back
on the agreement, Dumbledore once again appealed to her guilt and manipulated
her into letting Harry stay.

Harry learned two things from staying with the Dursleys: blind
love exists and adults can be enemies. He knows that his aunt and uncle are
capable of compassion, but they direct it towards his cousin Dudley. Vernon and
Petunia won't answer his questions and oppress any sign of magic that erupts
from him. Muggle schoolteachers refuse to believe that Harry can excel, only
blaming him for strange accidents. Thus Harry has learned to disregard
authority rather than take it at face value, and he sees the dark side to
unconditional love.

Harry's disregard for authority clashes with his respect for
Dumbledore. In the first book, when Harry breaks school rules, he breaks them
to prove himself and defend his pride. This happens when he rides a broomstick
to challenge Malfoy, for example. Such minor misdemeanors foreshadow his and
Ron's spectacular flying car entrance to Hogwarts in Book Two, where Dumbledore
has to threaten them with expulsion if they break any more rules. Harry and Ron
have to break the rules to uncover the Chamber of Secrets, and similar forays
end up more rewarding than one may think. Dumbledore has to encourage similar
disregard so that Harry can succeed, reaping the fruit of his actions.

Dumbledore's flaw, while a fatal flaw, allows Harry to have
a normal Hogwarts life for five years. Already an orphan with miserable
relatives and volatile popularity, Harry has plenty on his plate. At school he
dislikes being famous or feared, depending on the book, and at home the
Dursleys make him as miserable as humanly possible. If Harry had had to worry
about Voldemort returning and their eventual conflict, then the knowledge would
have cast a darker shadow on him. As it were, Harry was able to enjoy Quidditch,
excel in his Defense Against the Dark Arts classes, and bond with friends like
Ron, Hermione and Hagrid. Dumbledore's love thus proved beneficial in providing
Harry with a life at Hogwarts that he couldn't have enjoyed with his aunt and
uncle.

Once Harry has grown older, however, Dumbledore's concern for his
happiness causes a communication gap. First, he keeps Harry confined to the
Dursleys over the summer with no news and no warning of changes in the
Ministry. Harry, traumatized by Lord Voldemort's return and Cedric Diggory's
death, would have preferred avoiding the confinement. Second, when our beloved
headmaster discovers the mind link that Harry shares with Voldemort, he
attempts to distance himself from Harry so that the Dark Lord won't use the
boy's mind against him. This went horribly wrong, with Snape as Harry's
Occlumency teacher and Harry not learning how to block his mind from the Dark
Lord's visions. Sirius Black ended up dead because of these mistakes, and Harry
suffers intense guilt and distrust for Professor Snape. Dumbledore has to put
aside his compassion to see that Harry needs to grow up and face his
destiny.

The Flaw and the Hero

Telling Harry about the prophecy cements our favorite hero as a
budding adult. Seeing that Harry can handle the Dark Lord returning once a
year, at least until book three broke the pattern, Dumbledore feels he should
have explained to Harry why Voldemort wanted the Potters dead, why Harry was so
important first as a baby and then as a child, and his worries about Voldemort
invading Harry's mind. Once he explains the prophecy however, Harry proves that
he will do anything to defeat the Dark Lord, even give up his Hogwarts life. He
spends half his last year at Hogwarts preparing for the battle and decides that
the world is more important than his education.

Dumbledore treats Harry like an adult to prepare him for the final
fight. I am referring to the sixth book as the last time Harry and Dumbledore
meet face to face and not the seventh book where Harry seems to encounter his
ghost. We learn later that Dumbledore has only a year left, asked Snape to kill
him, and has a guess about how Harry can eliminate the last Horcrux. He works
with borrowed time and a Dark Lord whose power is growing stronger. Here is
what the reader sees in Book Six, however: Harry and Dumbledore meet to discuss
Voldemort's past, what influenced him as a child, and how he had discovered
temporary immortality, and their final encounter occurs when they enter the
cave with the locket. These facts allow Harry to form a battle plan to destroy
the Horcruxes and means by which to track them down, although the facts end up
being incomplete. There is no comfort, no explanation for the year's
near-murderous happenings; Harry only finds out the latter by eavesdropping on
Malfoy, whom Dumbledore treats like a student. Instead, Harry gets comfort from
knowing he can choose his path, and he chooses to defeat Voldemort with the
knowledge he has gained.

Dumbledore's final manipulation severs his potentially fatal and
platonic love for Harry. I am referring to Harry letting Voldemort kill him.
Most of us readers anticipated Harry sacrificing himself; he has established
himself as that kind of hero. What we did not anticipate was Dumbledore preparing
Harry for "slaughter" as Snape puts it, playing on Harry's need to
save others and capacity for selfless love. Harry by accepting this fate also
submits to a higher authority-- Snape's and Dumbledore's -- showing respect for
their plan. We thus realized that Dumbledore was manipulative, that Snape would
have to tell Harry about this fact at a certain time -- when Voldemort fears
for Nagini-- and during Hogwarts's darkest hour. He gambles on the fact that
Voldemort taking Harry's blood will enable our hero to survive the Killing
Curse, a gamble that could have cost Harry's allies the war. Yet his gamble
pays off, and Harry wins the war. Dumbledore thus overcame his flaw of blind
love so that Harry could make such a sacrifice.

Conclusion

Dumbledore's relationship with Harry is not complicated on the
surface. He tries to help an orphan with sudden fame and encounters with
psychotic wizards, offering wisdom about life, death, and the choices that we
make. Harry learns from the headmaster, and the teachings pay off in the final
battle and life subsequently thereafter. Harry does not fear death, and he
knows how important choices decide his fate.

Beneath every teaching, however, is the fear of both characters'
fatal flaws: blind love and disrespect for authority respectively. Sometimes
the flaws cause huge consequences, whether they involve characters dying or
severe breaches of trust. But when two characters work to overcome those flaws
for the greater good, as Dumbledore and Harry did, then their hard work ends up
building potential for a better world. With Harry earning his happy ending and
Dumbledore inner peace, they have built ample potential.

1 comment:

Blind Love, perhaps. I can't deny that . . . in fact, I think it builds into my own thesis. I figured that Dumbledore's greatest flaw was his self-inflicted martyrdom (that the 'blind love' provokes in him). Dumbledore's actions postpone the inevitable duel between Voldemort and Harry, despite the fact that there was a prophecy fating their confrontation. Then Dumbledore himself hunts down the Horcruxes, essentially doing Harry's job for him. He does this to protect Harry, even though the prophecy says that only Harry can kill Voldemort.I don't believe this is that bad a thing. The prophecy states that once they face each other, either Harry or Voldemort will die. Had they faced each other in an earlier book, I think Voldemort would have won. Dumbledore's actions postpone that conflict and buy Harry time to grow as a person. However, I also believe that his interference and manipulation made him an obstacle in Voldemort's path and so he had to die. In essence, by interfering with the prophecy, he killed himself.So, dying by Voldemort's hand is the ultimate conclusion in Dumbledore's story arch. He raises the child. He tries to protect the child from his destiny. In the end he is killed by trying to walk the Hero's path.From this we learn that, while we can guide our students - in the end we can only show them the path - we cannot walk it for them.That is how I see Dumbledore's relationship with Harry.